While Koether’s practice also engages with performance, music and text, and often incorporates unusual materials such as glitter and liquid glass, the history of painting continues to play a decisive role in her work. The exhibition will comprise two large series of works that respond directly to the French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665), a reinterpretation of his The Seven Sacraments reimagined as a series of installations, and Seasons (2012), a response to Poussin’s The Four Seasons. Remembering, repeating and working within a tradition, but deviating and radicalising this tradition dramatically, serves as a working model in Koether’s practice to investigate what it means to be a painter today.

Koether’s version of The Seven Sacraments proposes seven different approaches to contemporary painting: Confirmation presents everyday objects encased in clear liquid acrylic, attached to vast sheets of glass; Penance is symbolised by a contemporary Danish-designed perspex table that resembles Poussin’s depiction of drapery, while Baptism is represented by a painted canvas featuring a racing car driver rather than a scene from classical antiquity. Koether’s response to Poussin’s The Four Seasons is presented on freestanding sheets of glass and was shown at the 2012 Whitney Biennial in New York.

Saturday Exhibition Tours, 2pm, Free, Meet in the Foyer

29 June – Axel Wieder: Exhibitions Curator, Arnolfini

6 July – Katarína Complová: Filmmaker and Arnolfini steward

Exhibition Event

Saturday 6 July, 11am – 6pm, free

A continual programme of concerts, dj sets and performances will transform the ground floor of Jutta Koether’s exhibition into a space for listening and gathering, including a special performance by the artist.

Jutta Koether: Seasons and Sacraments has been organised in collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts with support from the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.